Event Sidequest: The Great Winter Snowball Fight

It's that time of year again! On December 10th, 2013, the Great Winter Hunt is on!

Be sure to collect your chocolate from the Advent Calendar every day! (Days change at midnight GMT, similar to gift resets).

Go to your profile, and chip the ice, so that you can begin giving Gingerbread Cheese to any friend who visits your profile.

You can thus collect Gingerbread Cheese from your friends' profiles. If they had built the second Festive Tavern upgrade, you may get Festive Feta as well, so you may want to take note of them as you find them.

You can collect cheese from up to 10 friends this way.

You can also visit profiles of inactive friends. You can chip on the ice on their profiles to get an Ice Coin (This attempts to send them a reminder, but you may cancel it if you wish, and still get the coin). You may collect up to 30 Ice Coins this way for the entire event.

Travel to the Festive Snow Fort. A strong Physical trap is recommended. For cheese, arm (from best to worst) Super Brie (if you can afford that), Festive Feta, Seasoned Gouda, Gingerbread Cheese, or you may use regular cheese in order to collect Snowball Bocconcini.

Then arm the Bocconcini to attract special event mice, that advance the HUD meter, and may drop Snow Blocks and Ice Coins.

The big snowballs represent special mini-boss mice: the Snow Boulder, the Reinbo, and the Snow Sorceress. They drop 20, 25, and 30 Snow Blocks respectively and some Ice Coins. They also sometimes drop special treasure maps (Sealed Nice List or Sealed Naughty List), or one of the new Festive trap skins.

Once you have 80 Snow Blocks, you can build your Snow Fort, allowing you to catch the S.N.O.W. Golem mouse at the end of the meter. He drops 30 Snow Blocks, 8 Ice Coins, and 1 Cannon Bits. Additional Snow Blocks can be used to build upgrades to your fort, for additional bonuses and rewards.

Completing all upgrades would get you the collectible Snow Fort Snowglobe, which is required to unlock the Snowball Journal Theme for purchase in the general store.

The Cannon Bits, 40 Ice Coins, and 189,000 gold can be used to purchase the Ice Blaster Trap. This is a decent Hydro weapon for the mid-game, slightly stronger than the Ancient Spear Gun.

Both the Ice Blaster Trap and the Glacier Gatler Trap (details below) have the special property of having a chance to produce a Snowball Charm whenever a mouse is caught. They also get power boosts when the Snowball Charm is equipped. (+10% power Bonus for Ice Blaster, +20% for Glacier Gatler)

Should you craft this? Note that it uses the same Oasis Bead that the Oasis Water Node Trap (OWN) requires.

Upsides: It is significantly cheaper to craft (including the Ice Blaster, it'll cost ~909,000 gold, as opposed to ~2,000,800 for the OWN), and gains a good power boost from the self-produced Snowball Charms.

Downsides: It is slightly weaker than the OWN if you're not using Snowball Charms. A huge downside, however, is that you would have reacquire an Oasis Bead, and craft an OWN anyway, in order to upgrade to the Phantasmic Oasis Trap.

Thus, if you're a progressing player, I do not recommend that you craft this, unless you wish to keep it as a souvenir.

There's also the elusive Snowflake Mouse, which may drop Snow Blocks, Ice Coins, Bocconcini, Advent Chocolate, and Festive skins! To catch her, use Winter Charms. If you have excess Bocconcini, you may trade them for Winter Charms in the Charm Shoppe.

You can also get Winter Hunt Gifts as loot drops, with a color based on your rank. Open them for some nice surprises!

Try to also collect as many Ice Coins as possible. They can be redeemed for various prizes at the stores. Advent Chocolate can be used to redeem Festive skins, though I'd recommend to hold them until the end of the event, due to the possibility of getting them for free. If you do get duplicate skins, they can be traded in the Marketplace.

Feeling generous? You have several options for gifting to friends; you can buy them a gift from Shops → Festive Gift Shoppe, you can leave a gift under the tree in their profile, or you can stuff a teammate's stocking on your hunting team page.